The present invention relates to a technique of judging compatibility between ink cartridges and a printing apparatus.
The ink jet printer generally carries out printing with ink supplied from an ink cartridge. Different ink cartridges have different contours and keep inks of different compositions. Selection of an ink cartridge that has the contour attachable to a specified printer but is incompatible with the printer gives unsatisfactory printing results. In order to prevent such a potential problem, various techniques have been proposed to determine the compatibility of the ink cartridge with the printer.
A proposed ink cartridge has a memory that stores therein various pieces of information including a production code of the ink cartridge. A list of compatible ink cartridges is stored in advance in the printer to which this ink cartridge is attached. The printer collates data read from the memory included in the ink cartridge with the list and thereby determines the compatibility of the ink cartridge with the printer, that is, whether or not the ink cartridge is applicable for the printer.
Another proposed technique provides a print head of the printer with ID information. The ID information of available print heads is stored in advance in a memory included in the ink cartridge. The printer determines the compatibility by collation of the ID information.
In the former technique, however, the list stored in the printer is provided as part of the firmware, and in many cases, the user does not update the list. The printer may thus determine that a newly developed ink cartridge without the production code in the list is unusable, even when the ink cartridge is actually compatible. Design of the list by taking into account the production codes of future ink cartridges certainly prevents this problem, but allocation of the production codes becomes undesirably complicated.
The latter technique allows even a newly developed ink cartridge to be applied to the old-type printer. The printing result, however, does not depend upon only the specification of the print head and the other hardware construction. Attachment of the newly developed ink cartridge to the printer having the compatible hardware may not give the favorable printing result, when the selected version of the printer driver is not compatible with the ink cartridge.
The object of the present invention is thus to solve the problems discussed above and to provide a technique of flexibly determining compatibility of an ink cartridge with a printing apparatus with high accuracy.
In order to attain at least part of the above and the other related objects, the present invention is directed to an ink cartridge attachable to a printing apparatus. The ink cartridge has a storage element that stores therein compatible driver information, which is used to specify a printer driver compatible with the ink cartridge.
The printer driver is designed according to the specification of the printing apparatus and the ink kept in the ink cartridge attached to the printing apparatus. Collation of the printer driver used for printing with the compatible driver information specifies the software compatibility of the ink cartridge with the printing apparatus to which the ink cartridge is attached. In the structure of the present invention, the compatible driver information is stored in the in cartridge. This arrangement enables the latest information relating to the compatibility to be provided even with regard to any newly developed ink cartridge, thus ensuring appropriate determination of compatibility.
Diverse procedures are applicable for the operation of the printing apparatus after the determination of compatibility. For example, in the case of xe2x80x98incompatiblexe2x80x99, the printing operation may be prohibited, or installation of a preferable printer driver may be suggested. Another applicable procedure informs the user of the incompatible combination and entrusts the user with determination of forcible execution or non-execution of the printing operation.
In the ink cartridge of the present invention, it is preferable that the compatible driver information includes version information of the printer driver.
The printer driver may be subjected to version up for the purpose of enhancing the printing quality. In such cases, application of the ink cartridge of the present invention desirably enables determination of compatibility of the ink cartridge with the new version of the printer driver.
In the ink cartridge of the present invention, it is also preferable that the compatible driver information includes prohibition information to specify at least one of a printing apparatus and a printer driver, for which use of the ink cartridge is prohibited.
In the case where the ink cartridge is incompatible with the printing apparatus, the forcible execution of printing may significantly worsen the printing quality or may cause fatal troubles to arise in the printing apparatus. For example, application of pigment ink to a print head for dye ink may cause the print head to be clogged. In such cases, application of the present invention positively prohibits the use of the ink cartridge that may cause fatal troubles.
In accordance with one preferable embodiment of the ink cartridge of the present invention, the compatible driver information expresses compatibility of the ink cartridge with multiple printer drivers in a stepwise manner.
For example, it is assumed that the respective combinations of the ink cartridge with the printer driver have the following relations. The combination with the printer driver of version 4 is optimum (that is, attaining the highest printing quality). The combination with the version 3 is compatible, though not being so suitable as the combination with the version 4. The combination with the version 2 is allowed with a little deterioration of the printing quality. The combination with the version 1 significantly worsens the printing quality. In this case, the ink cartridge of the present invention is applied to specify the degree of compatibility with the printer driver and inform the user of the presence of another printer driver having the higher compatibility. Application of the printer driver that is capable of selecting a processing specification and parameters among a plurality of options in the course of generating print data from master image data enables the details of the processing to be changed according to the information read from the storage element included in the ink cartridge.
In the above embodiment of the ink cartridge, the compatible driver information may store a mapping of the ink cartridge to multiple printer drivers with regard to each printing apparatus. This arrangement ensures application of the ink cartridge to a plurality of different printing apparatuses.
In the structure of the present invention, a plurality of different inks may be kept collectively in one ink cartridge.
In one preferable embodiment, the ink cartridge keeps one ink, and the storage element further stores therein ink specification information, which is used to specify the ink kept in the ink cartridge.
In the ink cartridge of the above embodiment, the ink specification information may include color information of the ink.
The ink specification information may include composition information of the ink.
The color information is, for example, the name of color like cyan, magenta, yellow, or black. The composition information regards, for example, the composition of ink like dye ink or pigment ink. When there are inks of an identical hue but different compositions, identification information for discriminating the compositions from each other is included in the composition information.
In the above arrangement of the present invention, the compatible driver information for specifying the compatible printer drivers is stored in the storage element included in each of ink cartridges that keep inks of diverse colors and components. This arrangement ensures determination of compatibility according to the ink kept in each ink cartridge.
In the structure of the present invention where the ink cartridge keeps one ink, the printing apparatus is capable of receiving a plurality of the ink cartridges attached thereto, and the compatible driver information specifies a printer driver corresponding to a combination of ink cartridges attached to the printing apparatus.
There are various combinations when the plurality of ink cartridges are attached to the printing apparatuses. The process of generating optimum print data, that is, the printer driver, depends upon the combination of ink cartridges. For example, print data to be generated in the case of printing with six color inks, cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta, yellow, and black is different from the print data in the case of printing with dark yellow and light black inks in addition to the six color inks. When a novel ink cartridge is developed to keep ink of any different color or composition from the conventional color or composition, the printer driver is generally updated according to the characteristics of the ink. In the above arrangement of the present invention, the adequate printer driver is specified corresponding to the combination of ink cartridges attached to the printing apparatus. This ensures flexible determination of compatibility with higher accuracy.
Another application of the present invention is a printing apparatus, to which the ink cartridge described above is attached.
The present invention is accordingly directed to a printing apparatus that records an image on a printing medium. The printing apparatus includes: a main body storage unit that stores therein printer driver information, which is applied to specify a printer driver used for printing; an input module that reads a predetermined piece of information from a storage element included in an ink cartridge attached to the printing apparatus; and a compatibility determination module that collates the input information with the printer driver information stored in the main body storage unit and determines compatibility of the ink cartridge with the printer driver.
The xe2x80x98predetermined piece of informationxe2x80x99 may be the compatible driver information discussed above. Such information ensures determination of whether the ink cartridge is compatible or incompatible with the selected printer driver.
In accordance with one preferable application of the printing apparatus of the present invention, the main body storage unit further stores compatible driver information, which is used to specify a printer driver compatible with the ink cartridge, and the compatibility determination module carries out the determination, based on the compatible driver information.
The xe2x80x98predetermined piece of informationxe2x80x99 stored in the storage element of the ink cartridge may not include the compatible driver information. In such cases, the arrangement of the above application ensures determination of whether the ink cartridge is compatible or incompatible with the selected printer driver. The compatible driver information stored in the main body storage unit may be supplied from a recording medium like a flexible disk or a CD-ROM or from a specific server that is connectable with the printing apparatus via a network.
In accordance with another preferable application of the present invention, the printing apparatus is capable of receiving a plurality of the ink cartridges attached thereto. The input module reads the predetermined piece of information from each of storage elements included in the plurality of ink cartridges, and the compatibility determination module carries out the determination, based on a combination of the predetermined piece of information.
This arrangement ensures flexible determination of compatibility or incompatibility of the ink cartridge with the selected printer driver with high accuracy, based on the combination of ink cartridges.
Still another application of the present invention is a print control apparatus that generates print data, which causes a printing module (printer) of the printing apparatus, to which the ink cartridge is attached, to print an image.
The present invention is accordingly directed to a print control apparatus that processes master image data and thereby generates print data, which causes a printer to print an image. The print control apparatus includes: an input module that reads a predetermined piece of information from a storage element included in an ink cartridge attached to the printer; and a processing control module that changes over a method of generating the print data, based on the input information.
The print control apparatus of the present invention is capable of generating print data according to a plurality of different procedures. For example, the printer driver of version 4 may be constructed to enable execution of the processing corresponding to any of the lower versions 1 through 3. The printer driver of such construction can adequately change over the processing mode according to the type of the ink cartridge. For example, in the case of installation of the printer driver of version 4, it is presumed that the information specifying the printer driver of version 3 as the optimum version is read from the ink cartridge. In this case, the print control apparatus of the present invention enables the printer driver of version 4 to carry out processing corresponding to the version 3. The selective application of the processing mode ensures generation of the optimum print data corresponding to the ink cartridge.
In accordance with one preferable application of the print control apparatus of the present invention, the printer is capable of receiving a plurality of the ink cartridges attached thereto. The input module reads the predetermined piece of information from each of storage elements included in the plurality of ink cartridges, and the processing control module carries out the changeover, based on a combination of the predetermined piece of information.
This arrangement changes over the series of processing corresponding to the combination of multiple ink cartridges, thus ensuring adequate generation of print data.
The technique of the present invention is also actualized by a method of controlling the printing apparatus and a print control method, in addition to the ink cartridge, the printing apparatus, and the print control apparatus discussed above. The present invention is further attained by a diversity of other applications including computer programs for actualizing these apparatuses or methods, recording media in which such computer programs are recorded, and data signals that include such computer programs and are embodied in carrier waves. The variety of additional factors described above are given to any of these applications.
When the technique of the present invention is attained by a computer program or a recording medium in which the computer program is recorded, the application may be the whole program for driving the printing apparatus or only part of the program that attains the functions of the present invention. Typical examples of the recording medium include flexible disks, CD-ROMs, magneto-optic discs, IC cards, ROM cartridges, punched cards, prints with barcodes or other codes printed thereon, internal storage devices (memories like a RAM and a ROM) and external storage devices of the computer, and a variety of other computer readable media.